​We were chatting on a video-call with an old friend, and he asked me how my rehab exercises were going. I told him that I had to repeat each exercise many times and do the same exercises over and over; and that doing the exercises day after day was yielding little progress. My friend told me that my description reminded him of the conversations he used to have with another friend. At that time, his friend’s daughter was attending ballet classes at a prestigious school. Ballet requires dozens of repetitions of each step many times a day, just like rehab. His friend found his daughter’s training monotonous. I thought of the actual drive his daughter had to have in order to be a ballet dancer, and of the perseverance she needed to repeat the same movements many days a week. And then I thought about the perseverance I needed to be able to walk and use my arms again. I thought of the boredom and frustration I felt, caused by the constant repetition that only got me a little forward (friends and acquaintances’ admiration notwithstanding).
When I was seventeen, I decided I wanted to study ballet. I started taking classes, but I was easily bored. I didn’t last very long. Yet we always hear stories about famous dancers: how they got to their current position thanks to their indomitable passion. They dreamed of being a dancer and worked hard to make their dream come true. Every repetition was a step toward their goal, so they never tired of repeating.
I long for recovering my lost skills. That’s why I have to repeat my exercises, and repeat them again and again. And despite my boredom and frustration, I have to keep repeating them, just like ballet dancers. Maybe, like those who reach the top, I’ll make my dream come true. Maybe, if I dig deep down under the negative feelings, I’ll be able to find the drive to persevere, and progress will increase. 

​It was early in the morning. I was taking my meds, and Eric was standing next to me. (Now I’m grabbing the spoon and eating the yogurt with my meds, like a grown baby.) I thought of the day that was awaiting me: having (an awful) breakfast, then doing speech and leg exercises; walking; doing arm exercises; stretching; having (a passable and more-than-enough) lunch; reading, writing, and translating (a bit of pleasure to cut the boredom); having dinner; and taking my meds and cleaning myself, with Eric’s help. And then, the next morning would come, and I would have to start all over again. So, I asked Eric how he did this every morning. “I wake up,” he answered. His tone said everything.
            I thought how he had to go take every step and repeat it over and over, just like me. And I thought how tired and sick of it he must be, just like me: getting up; taking Nathan to school; making my meds and bringing them to me so that I could take them; going (virtually) to work; going shopping to the grocery store and the drug store; cooking things so that I could have lunch the next morning; working again; making dinner when he finished work; after we had dinner with Nathan, making my meds; and helping me clean myself. Then, the next morning would come, and he would have to do things all over again. And the same things would happen on weekends, sans work.
So, I decided that I would suggest to him that in order to avoid feeling worn-out and frustrated, we should help each other. We should think together and remind each other of the same things he’d suggested years ago, and repeated them when dreariness overwhelmed me. Every day one of us showed tiredness; every day one of us felt like quitting; every day routine seemed to get the best out of us, we should mention the three Ps: be patient, be positive, and push. He shouldn’t hide his feelings from me out of a need to protect me. We should take this journey together and pick each other up when we fell.

​All along my young and adult life, I thought of my left hand as the clumsy one. I couldn’t do anything that required delicate movements: playing the piano, sewing, or writing. Those jobs I reserved for the right. Then, after my injury, my left hand became useless. I couldn’t turn or lift my wrist; I couldn’t open and close my fingers. Every movement I could do easily and without a thought with my right was now denied to me; the muscles in my left couldn’t hear my brain’s orders.
I first discovered the magnitude of the obstacles I couldn’t overcome when I started going to the Rehab Center as an outpatient. After I finished my session with the therapist, I went with Eric and my then nurse aid to the cafeteria to have lunch. The cafeteria was a pleasant place, wide and with large windows that overlooked the river. Eric got a turkey sandwich for himself, and a tuna salad sandwich and yogurt for me. He opened the yogurt and handed me both.
I looked around me and saw families seated at round tables. A water bottle was resting on each table. Then, I saw family members grab the bottle, open it, and pour the water onto their glass. I thought of my inability to hold the bottle and unscrew the lid at the same time, and just the thought of it made me feel parched. And the same thing would happen every day we ate at the Rehab Center cafeteria.
From then on, I became sensitive to any action that emphasized my inabilities: I couldn’t lift the soup pot full of soup and stir the ingredients, which left out all the fragrance and the flavors; I couldn’t chop the onions; I couldn’t mince the herbs; and I couldn’t eat ice cream or yogurt –  the bowls would fall as soon as I tried to get a spoonful. Every action emphasized my left hand’s absence.
Every day since, I’ve learned about its significance. In the past, my right hand was always the more dexterous one, which made it very useful for me. So much so, that my left was easily forgotten. But in the years after my injury, I’ve realized how much I miss my left when I need to manage in my everyday life: my right can work only as a teammate. So, it doesn’t matter whether the left hand is clumsy or not; it’s still indispensable.

​My injury happened out of the blue. While I was in the operation room, the hemangiomas in my brain started bleeding unexpectedly, and I got into a coma that became reversible thanks to my neurosurgeon and his team. When I woke up, I found out that I couldn’t swallow or talk clearly and that my left limbs couldn’t move.  While I was sleeping in the rehab center a few months later, I had a seizure. The staff had to administer an anti-seizure med to stop it. So, at fifty-five I was hemiplegic and suffered seizures through no fault of my own. Out of the blue, a building had crumbled on me, and Eric and Nathan could do nothing to prevent it.  All of a sudden, I became a patient at home: I was unable to walk or use my left arm and hand; I had to do my rehab exercises religiously; due to the work-out and the anti-seizure med I continued to take, I was very tired at the end of the day; and because of my hemiplegia, I couldn’t manage on my own. I went from taking care of the house and Nathan plus working, to needing someone to take care of me. Eric had to replace me and look after me, in addition to doing his stressful work.
As I mention in another chapter, to Eric, spending all the time in the hospital with me during my coma changed his life: because of that, he feels that everything I face represents a threat. This means that all the care he would like to give me and can’t (his work doesn’t allow for it), another person (a hired professional) has to give it. For my part, I experience every inability to manage on my own as helplessness, and any form of help as captivity.
So, we have to strike a balance between fear and letting go; between accepting help and feeling trapped. There’s a boundary between us that we should avoid crossing if we wanted to respect the other’s wishes and needs. If I claim my right for autonomy, I overlook Eric’s fear of my death and wish to help me. If Eric acts out of fear for my life and a desire to help (stemming from his love for me), he overlooks my wish for autonomy and my sense of entrapment. This conflict was at its height when I was undergoing the phase of confusion – when my brain was really swollen.
To respect my needs, Eric would have to refrain his impulse to help and his fear, because his fear needs a nurse aid, and both a nurse aid and his help leave me with a sense of entrapment and the consequent anger. To respect his wishes and needs, I should refrain from rejecting his or the hired professional’s help, because not having a hired professional means that Eric will have more work than his own (which means more stress). A long journey is facing us, and we both will have to travel together. It will take time for me to heal. And until I heal, Eric and I will have to do the dance: to dance around the boundary without crossing it.

I’d asked my neurologist several times when I would stop taking the anti-seizure med – despite its many advantages, I always felt tired, and I had to take it every day, twice a day. I thought my brain should have been healed by now. My neurologist is a very cautious man; to make a decision about scaling down, he wanted to see an EEG. So, we waited until two weeks were passed after I’d got my two vaccine shots (Eric’s idea). But on my last appointment, he came up with an unexpected solution: I’d take a new anti-seizure med that didn’t have any side effects, and I could slowly be weaned off Kepra.
A few weeks later, my nurse aid came, as usual, to help me with my daily exercises. As I was doing my regular speech work-out, she looked at me and made me straighten my head. It took some effort, but I did it. Then, she told me to straighten it again, and I did it. My brain couldn’t register any imbalances, which were a lot. Every exchange with her meant to listen and to speak, and every attempt to speak was hard. As I was using the breather, inhaling and exhaling made me feel breathless, and all the while I was fighting to keep my eyes open. Then, it came the time to bring my foot up. No matter how many times I tried, my foot remained on the bed despite my nurse aid’s help.
Finally, she called Eric. Eric took a look at me and suggested that I take a break from exercising. I felt so tired, I said yes. It would be so good to rest… As soon as I put my head on the pillow, I fell asleep. And asleep. And asleep; being awake didn’t last more than a few minutes. Eric was very concerned, so he decided to call the neurologist. The neurologist had thought that since there were only one in five hundred people taking the drug who suffered its side effects, it had none. But the issue was that I was that one. After Eric’s calls, the neurologist ordered him to stop giving me the drug. We all – Eric, my nurse aid, and I – breathed a sigh of relief.
During the days that went by since Eric stopped giving me the anti-seizure med, I’ve had to climb up to my old self – the self I was when I was only taking Kepra and had made significant improvements since my injury. It’s true that I’ve slowly progressed, but my muscles are week. I get easily tired, and balancing requires practice. Yet, I can see a way forward; it’s slow, but it’s there. So, I decided to wait for the anti-seizure meds to leave my body, and keep practicing. But I’ve decided I won’t take any new drug: I can’t go through the same steps again. I can’t experience the same loss I’d experienced before; I can’t relive the past work.
I think I learned some lessons from the effects of this drug, and its lingering effects. First, efforts and patience pay. Second, I must be persistent, yet aware of my limited ability to respond: never push too much. And third, I should never be too impatient; what may look like a quick fix may actually be a trip to the past and the need to go back to the present. And as I’m experiencing, that backward journey may be too costly.
​

​To add an exercise to my walking routine and enlarge my practicing, my nurse aid suggested that I walk with the crutch from the bench where I do my arm exercises, to the wheelchair where I stretch at the end of my day. So, every day I walk with the crutch before stretching. The first time I had to do it, I was apprehensive; I felt tired. What if I lost balance? Eric wouldn’t be behind me to catch me. But I moved to the end of the bench, got up with my nurse aid’s help, balanced carefully, and grabbed the crutch that she handed me. I looked at the chair, which was ahead of me and on my left. I recalled her words: think of what you will do before you start; lift your left leg and lock it before you step; hold your lock; balance; then, take a step with your right leg; make sure your steps are small. And I started walking on my own.
I walked slowly forward until I reached the chair. Then, I turned, stepping backward with my left and forward with my right. When I finished turning, I walked backward step by step until I felt the wheelchair against my legs. This was the sign I could sit, which I did carefully and slowly. And I had walked here from the bench without losing balance and without having Eric to help me in case I did! My nurse aid and I did the high five the way she’d taught me: you slide hands and you walk with your fingers against the other’s palm. The rest of the day went by fast: I had lunch, worked on my writing and translating, and did my regular phone calls. We had dinner, and I went through my routine with Eric.
The next morning, I asked Eric to help me go to the commode. Eric has established a change since he witnessed my falling from the chair and bleeding as I hurt my forehead with my glasses and he couldn’t do anything about it (he was in the middle of a meeting). I was still confused when it happened, and my core was week. But the image stayed with him, and he insisted that I take his help to go to the bathroom instead of transferring to the wheelchair and do it on my own (as my older brother had taught me when he’d visited years ago). When I’d finished and stood up, he enticed me to walk without any form of support. And as I did it, he surrounded my body with his arms.
I took very small, hesitant steps as I strived to keep my balance: first the left leg, then the right, always locking and holding the other leg while keeping my body straight. I constantly focused on my legs, making sure I lifted them and locked my knees as soon as my feet touched the ground. I turned, crossed over to the left, stepped back, and sat very slowly on the bed, stretching my right arm and resting my hand on the bed. And I breathed deeply. I’d arrived without needing Eric’s help. My eyes teared up. When my nurse aid came the next morning, Eric told her about my feat. Right away, my nurse aid countered with my other feat. I didn’t know whether I deserved to feel proud or not.
Then Sunday came, and it was my turn to walk again. I did my speech and leg exercises. Eric asked me if I wanted to rest before walking. And I felt tired and apprehensive at the same time. I decided to turn a blind eye and pay no attention to my feelings – I’d raise my head and walk, as I decided to do in the past. When he ran into them on the street or talked on the phone, Eric “bragged” (his words) about me to our friends. I’d walked without any means of support! They were all impressed and happy for me, but I don’t know if I should feel proud; better wait, and practice.

​Every other day I check my email to keep up with all my friends and family and make sure my inbox stays clean. Every day a week I come across some work-related emails: old clients who haven’t found out about my injury asking me to translate or interpret for them, and prospective clients with a request for a translation.
I can choose to answer “yes” or “no” to the old ones, depending on my experience with working with them (as I write in another chapter). An old client, a Peruvian author of short stories, recently contacted me to ask me to translate his stories into English. I had enjoyed translating them in the past, and we got along, so I answered that I would do it if he didn’t have tight deadlines. I’m currently translating one of them for him. On the other hand, I’ve answered “no” to quite a lot of organizations for whom I’d worked before the injury and had not been pleased with them as a client.
I have yet another kind of emails: from a professional network letting me know about job openings, and from a job site where both employees and employers can post. Some have remained unopened, but while I did open the others, I didn’t click on the link: do I want to take the risk of getting a job if I’m going to be forced to fulfill my obligations nonstop for several years? Would I be sufficiently healed to take on this responsibility? And if I did get the position, for how long would the job last? I vaguely picture myself working there, and every image is somewhat daunting. I want to and don’t want to make the move. The only job for which I’d like to apply is the interpreter one at the Beacon School District – it feels familiar; I think I’d be able to perform. I know the people who’ve worked and had kids there: I’ve years of memories stored in my brain about Nathan’s schools.
But I’ve never held a post in the other organizations. They remind me of all the jobs I had when I lived here years ago. When I wonder what my performance will be in the new workplace, I think of my bad arm, my slow brain, my accent. I say to myself, if you don’t try, you’ll never get a job. But it’s so easy to follow my own pace; to read and write and translate at home; to remain apart from everybody; to let Eric bring the income while I slowly heal; to avoid commitments. I have to open emails when I get them repeatedly. I have to apply for potential jobs. I have to take that step, but I don’t. Every time I see the name of the sender, I move it directly to the corresponding mailbox.

​Eric has a family ritual that I’ve adopted and am encouraging Nathan to adopt. It takes place every night before dinner. We thank all the people who were responsible for our having food on the table: people working the land and harvesting the produce; grocery employees; youth in charge of market restacking; and dairy workers. I strongly believe in the importance of attaching their deserved significance in the provision of our food to overlooked people.
Recently, when we were doing our daily ritual before dinner, I pictured the workers involved in food production. Many of them are Latin American migrant workers, which makes them the object of derision. They are paid under minimum wage for working in terrible conditions. I pictured them at their workplace. I saw men, women, and youth who have perfectly functioning legs, arms, and hands with which to ensure the provision of the food for us to pay (with Eric’s hard-earned money, I must add).
Unlike me, these workers have fully operating limbs. Yet unlike me, they have to work hard to make ends meet and save enough money to send home. So, my adopted ritual made me rethink my idea of justice.

​While I was talking to a friend, she asked me how I was doing with my rehab. I shared my disappointment with her: I did the exercises every single day, but progress was very slow, I told her.  My leg didn’t go farther than walking – it turned outside and I couldn’t turn it inside. It shook. Plus, I couldn’t move my arm and fingers. I felt really frustrated. So, my friend started probing: Had I tried seeing a better therapist? Was I still going to the rehab center? Why didn’t I call the old therapist I liked? If the rehab center that had aqua-therapy was in Newburgh and Eric didn’t have time to drive me, why couldn’t I call a reliable cab driver who could help me? Or if that wasn’t feasible, I had friends whom I could ask for help.
Our conversation set me traveling in a lot of different directions. Why was I dissatisfied with my slow progress? Why did I consider it slow? Was it impatience? Was it guilt for Eric’s level of work, and hence of his stress? Why the reluctance to go places on my own? Why the unsurpassable, overwhelming fear? Why did I immediately resort to Eric? I traced my mind back to the onset of the quarantine and our decision to stay home – my usual joke that it was easier for me to get used to do that because it was what I always did. I was always afraid of going out on my own. I had always resisted help because I always defended my independence, but the constant help I resisted had made me dependent; had filled me with insecurity. I had to call my neighbor friends to ask them for help.
Then I thought of another suggestion of my friend: ask another friend who drove a car to take me and my broken electric wheelchair to a man who fixes appliances, so that I could go places where I couldn’t go with my regular wheelchair. I was reluctant to do that – where could I go with the fixed chair? Why go there alone? But I could also refute this argument. I could ask a BHA friend who’s retired to go with me. Defeated yet again. There was still another advice given by my friend: talk to the therapist who had worked with me before I became an outpatient at the rehab center and have a consultation with her about my slow-to-progress arm, hand, and fingers. So, I asked Eric for the name of the rehab company who had sent her, but he had forgotten it. As I looked for it on the web, I started feeling excited once again. Maybe I could ask this therapist to come and watch how my extremities were moving, and suggest new exercises that could cause progress.
Then, “my lightbulb turned on,” as we say in Argentina. Maybe the main obstacle I needed to overcome was my reluctance to do exercises repeatedly. Reluctance was linked to a sense of frustration, which was caused by tiredness, which was caused by frustration – a catch twenty-two. There was an easy fix for this: a dose of energy. According to my nurse aid, it meant raising my head and assuring myself I could do it. It was a long list of things to do, but I would do them, eventually. And until that time came, I could be patient, and leave impatience and frustration aside.
 

​In the pre-injury years, I used to walk to a coffee shop to read and write. There, I read poetry and philosophy, and wrote a poetry book as well as a manuscript on foreignness, language, and memory. The last two were a pretext for reading, thinking, and immersing in my writing. This means they were a source of pleasure to me. The manuscript ended up as a weird mix of essays, poetic prose, flash stories, and poems. I revised it quite a bit and sent it to a few presses, who responded with a polite rejection letter. After my last attempt, my hemangioma bled.
I’ve recounted the complications I experienced, my subsequent symptoms, and my final discharge. Since I came home, I’ve been confined to my bed, surrounded by the walls of our erstwhile living room that serves as my bedroom. The wall to my right has a window, which provides light and entertainment – I watch people come and go on the sidewalk, with or without dogs on a leash and with or without children of all ages. While I’ve made quite a lot of progress walking, I’m unable to go places unmonitored (in case I fall), and since I still have a bad arm, I can’t wheel myself on my wheelchair – my good arm isn’t strong enough to approach a sidewalk that goes uphill. That means help, and help isn’t always available. Now that the days are getting warmer, at least I can go out on the deck and work and read on the computer and on the Kindle: the Kindle has been a solution for my bad arm (as I tell in another chapter). And when I’m tired, I come back inside, meditate in my bed, and go back to reading and writing.
When my brain started healing, I didn’t want to take up sending the manuscript to presses – I didn’t want to go back to that place that had meant so much to me. But finally, I recalled that one of my grad school friends – an old, close friend who meant a lot to me, both he and his wife – was a publisher. So, I asked him if he could read my manuscript and give me some editorial advice. He said yes, and made some great suggestions that I’m following. Rereading it has entirely changed my views on my “offspring”; I’ve discovered how much I’d idealized it. Besides revising the manuscript, I’m continuing to write my poems (the two latest books and this one are in Spanish, as are all my books), bit by bit. And I keep adding chapters to this blog and writing essays (also in Spanish) for an e-journal and a future book.
I keep doing my exercises with my nurse aid, but progress is slow: the door to the street has barely opened. In any case, the sole idea of getting to the coffee shop on my own, buying a cup of coffee, and sipping it for a few hours fills me with anxiety. So, I continue to lie in my bed, surrounded by four walls. But when I’m lying there, I read and write. Writing means building myself a world to travel and explore; a world where to seek shelter. Writing helps me resist falling into a bottomless pit. I can find pleasure in reading, revising, and rereading; reading to draw a path and traveling the path into the unknown, where the unknown is exciting because it creates a sense of expectancy. I’m confined to my bed, but my mind is free.